Originally Posted by Fast-Ford
If you are only lowering 1.5 inches, you should be fine without a camber kit. The biggest thing is to make sure you don't have anything other than exactly a ZERO camber. The only reason camber is used on a race track is when you make a circuit and have mostly right or left turns..........by leaning the tires you get better grip. But on the street, you make left and right turns so camber angles that are greater or less than zero only serve to wear the tires.......in addition to the fact that they only help handling at speeds higher than you will see on the street when the car is on edge in the corners.
That is so wrong . . .
1st, camber serves a pupose even on the street. you think handling physics change just because the car went from the race track to the street? Camber has nothing to do with speed but everything to do with lateral G's which you can see at 15 mph. You don't drive that slow on the street do you?
2nd, and this is the most IMPORTANT thing to REMEMBER,
CAMBER DOES NOT WEAR TIRES, TOE DOES! Sure -3 degrees of camber will wear out a tire quicker but the -1.5 to -2 degrees of camber we see is not a tire wear issue. Toe on the other hand is what will wear a tire. Toe in the front should be set slightly out on each wheel while set to ZERO in the rear. As a side note we have NO camber adjustment in stock form. You can add a kit but you are often doing yourself a disservice by removing negative camber. An integra handles best with about -1.5 to -2 degrees of camber and you can even vary the rear so that there is less negative camber in the rear of the car to help with oversteer.
Trust me on the camber wear issue. I run -2.25 degrees camber Front, -1.4 degrees camber rear, 1/8" total toe out in the front and Zero Toe in the rear. This setup has me well over 20,000 miles on my ES100's with no adverse or uneven wear and several miles left on them.